While the main competitors (Salesforce and Microsoft) entertain each other with the lawsuits, SugarCRM gradually strengthens its market position. Yesterday the company officially announced the release of SugarCRM 6. The major changes have affected the interface - it became much easier, more convenient and flexible. Users will be able to leave on screen only these elements that are used. The new convenient contextual search panel lets you view search results without leaving the current page, and the new recent pages panel makes navigation easier. It's interesting that the new interface is available only in payed (Professional and Enterprise) editions, but not in the free Community Edition. Because of this the company received another portion of critics, because it actively uses the "open-source" term for SugarCRM promotion.

The leading SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 vendors decided to make their business a little more "WOW". In the new show-channell called "I Choose the Cloud" the founders and executives of cloud companies appeal to join the cloud revolution. Because cloud applications mean not only simplicity, usability, speed and cost efficiency. They also mean the new exciting ways of running business. Because these applications are create not by serious gloomy IT-people in ties, but by such cool guys, who enjoy what they do. Guest stars: Aaron Levie (Box.net), Chuck Dietrich (SlideRocket), David Weekly (PBworks), Eugene Lee (Socialtext), Wendy Lea (Get Satisfaction), Clint Oram (SugarCRM), Tien Tzuo (Zuora), Matt Brezina (Xobni)

Major SaaS vendors are now less interested in providing applications - they want to create web platforms and grab the world (and earn commission on the other developers). Salesforce was the first to play this game, then Google, NetSuite, SugarCRM and others jumped into this wagon. Box.net (that doesn't have such financial strength as the above mentioned companies) invented even more interesting platform strategy. Box.net wants to be present on each popular platform. First, they created the connector for Force.com, then joint the Intuit Partner Program and Google Apps Marketplace, and recently released modules for SuiteCloud and Sugar 6. Thus, they build the cross-platform cloud content management system. This system allows to store all content in a single online repository and access it in different SaaS systems used in the company: CRM, ERP, Collaboration system. Even more interesting is the opportunity to create shared cross-company extranet based on Box.net: for example, the same file may be available from Salesforce account owned by company A and NetSuite account owned by company B.

SugarCRM, an open-source Salesforce alternative, is trying to keep up with its rival. The newest version SugarCRM 5.5 is focused on the same areas as latest Salesforce versions: platform, social tools and mobile access. Of course, the most significant upgrade is the new integration platform Sugar Cloud Connectors, that allows to link SugarCRM to third-party business applications using Web services. As an example, the company introduced the LinkedIn connector, that allows to display LinkedIn-profile data on contact page inside SugarCRM. The new activity streams module Social Feeds is very similar to the recently unveiled Salesforce Chatter. In addition to short message exchange and status updates, it allows you to receive notifications about various actions in the system, such as invoice creation or customer data change.